


Are You Sorry?

by a_nonny_moose



Series: My AU [84]
Category: Markiplier Egos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 18:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14384271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_nonny_moose/pseuds/a_nonny_moose
Summary: What does Bim use his powers for? Prompted by an Anon over on tumblr.





	Are You Sorry?

The main thing that Bim uses his powers for, obviously, is being a Little Shit. He’s petty and has the same, strangely violent sense of humor that Will does. If he’s bored, he’ll help Wilford kidnap people to exercise his magic. Purely an exercise. No malicious intent. Of course. 

Bim can be a diva, and he’ll summon his aura just to see the others fawn over him, just to get his way. He’s kissed every figment in the office at some point (except maybe the Googles), but it’s nearly always in good fun. 

Nearly always.

Bim works with Wilford nearly every day, and they know each other inside and out. The Googles and Bim get along well enough, but don’t regard each other particularly highly (except for Google_G, who looks out for Bim, and Bim who looks out for him). Dr. Iplier has a soft spot for Bim, the youngest and often the most impressionable. Dark… well the less said about Dark and Bim, the better.

The Host and Bim have quite the _interesting_ relationship. 

Host is one of the oldest figments in the office—by far, he’s the least approachable of them. Bim, by contrast, is one of the youngest, kind and almost naïve in his trust. 

It starts with Bim slipping into the Host’s room one night, soon after the office was first established.

* * *

“H-Host?”

No response, and Bim, holding his misgivings close to his chest, padded further in. “Host?”

It was dark in the library, barely enough seeping candlelight for Bim to see the outlines of bookshelves receding into the must of the room. For all he knew, the Host’s room could go on forever. He could get lost in here—

“—and never find his way out.” The tapping of keys on a typewriter, the Host’s voice nearly indistinguishable from the rustling of paper, the creaking of wood. 

Bim nearly tripped, stumbling to a halt. “It’s—it’s me, Bim.”

“The Host does not appreciate unwanted visitors.”

“I’m just—I wanted to see—”

“The Host’s library is not a zoo, and he is certainly not an exhibit.” The words came, cold, with the snuffing of light. Bim was suddenly left in pitch blackness, fingers groping for the edges of the nearest shelf. 

“I just wanted to talk to you,” Bim started, hesitant. “Become friends, y’know?”

The barest hint of a pause, and: “The Host has made it very clear that he does not need any company.”

A force, like the wind blowing in over the sea, and Bim staggered back. The door seemed to draw closer, a tingle down Bim’s spine. _Leave_.

“I-I’ll be quiet,” Bim protested, planting his feet. “I promise.” The winds were pushing him, and he took another step backwards. _Unwanted_.

“Get. Out.”

“I just wanted to know if you had—had a specific book. A—A play?”

Even if Bim imagined it, there was the barest trace of hesitation. 

“Shakespeare, if—if you have it—” Bim was stuttering, grasping at straws. “I have a really good King Duncan, if you want—”

“The Host cannot allow visitors.” A pause, the power stilling, as if it was holding its breath. _Please_. “Get out.”

“I—I insist.” Bim pressed his hand against the nearest bookcase, willing the worn wood to bend to his touch. He could see a flicker of candlelight through the books: he was so close. The Host, all his power, behind a shelf and a handful of words. 

Silence—acquiescing, resigned. “If Bim will be silent, and if he will not be bothersome, the Host will allow him to stay.”

And Bim, that first night, sits silent and straight-backed in an uncomfortable chair, reading through the first act of Macbeth. Never mind the notes he’d meant to make over the play, for his and Wilford’s next show. ever mind the talking points he’d prepared, trying to make conversation with the Host. For tonight, he is silent. He waits, and he listens. 

* * *

Bim doesn’t dare to use his aura, even once he finds it. The Host is the one that helped him to discover it, after all, and Bim has some sense of loyalty. 

It takes a long time, but Bim and the Host move far from this first little introduction. 

Bim reads plays quietly in the corner, a stack of paper by him to make notes. He reads with his tongue between his teeth, often mouthing the words or miming the gestures, a true playwright. The Host listens with vague amusement, a gentle admonishment if Bim is too loud. 

The library and recording room (they function as the same space, provided the Host is alone, as he often is) are a sanctuary from the rest of the office. The Googles’ explosions and bickering never seem to rattle these walls, and even Wilford is hesitant to disturb the peace. Dark, when he visits, is curt, and keeps his stay brief. There’s a power deeper than any of them here, it seems, and the others are only ever guests of the gracious Host.

Dr. Iplier and Bim sit with the Host often: Dr. Iplier and the Host are old, old friends, and the Doctor will sit for hours, reading aloud in a slow, steady voice that seems to match the rhythm of the Host’s typewriter. Bim watches with veiled envy. That kind of intimacy is beyond him, for now. 

One day, one day, Bim will have it. 

For now, Bim’s aura skirts around the Host’s room, and around their late-night talks. Sure, the purple laps at the Host’s heels from time to time, but it avoids entirely the trust that they’ve built.

It’s a strange, delicate kind of trust. Bim waits, and waits, with bated breath, for the Host to snap and kick him out. The Host waits, with a dull kind of resignment, for Bim’s inevitable betrayal. The manipulation is all fair in love and war, and it isn’t as if he never saw it coming. 

What the Host waits for is not Bim’s tidal wave of mauve. He waits, and fears, the day that Bim no longer needs the mists of his aura. The Host only ever fears the day that he begins to care. 

* * *

That day comes and goes, the figments that live in the office growing closer and closer together. Bim’s powers are only ever used to make their shows more dramatic, only ever swept forward on whims. It’s illusions, finger magic, parlor tricks. 

But you asked me, Anon, what _else_ does Bim use his powers for?

My Bim, for those who don’t know, is an incubus. He pits the other figments against each other in horrible Date My Ass gameshows, uses his charm to wrap the others around his finger. 

My Bim was resurrected from the dead in the February of 2017, when nearly everyone had given him up as a lost cause. 

My Bim is more powerful than he thinks he is, and only ever half in control. 

* * *

And Bim’s aura stole forward: ripples, then waves, then crashing tsunami. The Host didn’t have time to narrate his way out of it. Hook, line, and sinker, the Host leaned up to kiss Bim, and he froze in place. Power, golden and sweet as honey, lived behind the Host’s tongue, and Bim drank it in. 

For a moment, Bim’s concentration broke. A moment, while he backpedaled, panicked, found he was in too deep. A moment, and that was all it took.

The Host jerked backwards, anger meeting hemorrhage between his temples. 

Bim found himself knocked back—did he stumble? was he pushed? “H-Host, I—”

The Host was silent, a tremor almost invisible in the candlelight. Bim had spent long enough listening to the Host speak, hands splayed; or record, low, into the microphone, to know that something was wrong. They’d kissed before—the only incubus in the office, Bim had kissed all of them, in good fun or to prod them in the right direction. This, in the low light of the Host’s room, felt…different. Wrong. 

“Host,” Bim repeated, reaching forward—the Host’s hands were familiar in his, forever correlated with laughing days and peaceful evenings, friendship and eyes heavy with work. “I-I didn’t mean—”

The Host stood, a swift, unnatural movement. The flame of the candle, their only light, wavered dangerously.

It was suddenly colder.

The Host spoke, and it wasn’t the Host’s voice anymore. “Get. Out.”

Bim tripped over himself, jumping to his feet, edging backwards. “I—um, yeah. Host, it’s—it’s me, it’s Bim. Your friend.”

The Host’s head cocked to one side, and the candlelight fell over his face. Blood, hot and slick on his cheeks, dripped into the kind of smile that Bim had only ever seen on Wilford’s face. Crazed, and betrayed, and powerful. 

“The Host has no friends.”

And Bim wasn’t sure when the light flickered out, or when the bat manifested itself in the Host’s hand, but he was running, running for the door that seemed lightyears away. 

Even once he was safe, panting in the hallway as the Googles spared him concerned looks, Bim had the sinking feeling that something had changed. 

* * *

He went back, against his own better judgement, to a door stained with blood and locked to the outside world. 

Bim knocked. “Host? I—I—can we talk?” 

No response, the skittering of papers, like a rat over the floor. 

* * *

Bim, staring into his dressing-room mirror, realizes too late what had changed. All this time, and he couldn’t bring himself to say ‘I’m sorry.’

Was he sorry?

And Bim thinks it over, long and hard. Bim, the incubus, looks himself over in the mirror, and hums a few notes in a golden, honeyed voice. 

Stolen power, sweet behind his tongue.

No, Bim wasn’t sorry at all. 

* * *

_“It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”_

_-Aung San Suu Kyi_


End file.
